The Loch (40 page)

Arriving at the opposite gate, I immediately noticed several things.

Unlike the fencing near the farmhouse, the wood and wire along the Loch side was brand-new and far sturdier, its gate heavily chained. More curious were coils of barbed wire set along the outside of the fence, creating a barrier that separated the grazing area from the Loch's fifteen-foot drop-off.

But the mental alarm bells truly sounded when I spotted the aluminum shed housing a portable generator and the half dozen bundles of wire that fed
into
Loch Ness!

Desiring a better vantage, I scaled the bolted fence, then maneuvered down a tight, twisting foot path bordered by barbed wire which led to the boating dock. Walking out on the pier, I lay down on my belly and scanned the water's edge.

There were eight underwater floodlights, set in pairs and all facing out toward the Loch.

Now I knew why the sheep were huddled away from the water— they were afraid! Calum was afraid, too, but he'd chosen to adopt new defenses rather than expose the creature to the rest of the world.

Why?

Wind whipped at my face, the once-clear sky growing overcast and gray. Feeling more than a bit uneasy on the dock, I walked back to the gate, scaled it, then returned to my motorcycle just as it began to rain. The barn door was unlocked, so I pushed the Harley inside, then lay back against a bale of hay while I awaited the return of Calum Forrest.

Aboard the
Nessie III
Urquhart Bay
9:45 P.M.

Wind whipped across Loch Ness, rattling the pilothouse windshield while churning the dark surface into three-foot swells.

Brandy Townson stood steady at the wheel, her mind preoccupied with keeping the
Nessie III
clear of Urquhart Bay's unforgiving shoreline.

Michael Newman sat behind her at the sonar array, his head in his hands, his stomach queasy from the constant rocking. Being stuck inside the pilothouse was only compounding the engineer's seasickness, and he desperately needed to get off the water and back into his dry, warm hotel room.

"I can't take this anymore, I'm going to be sick!"

"No' in here," Brandy yelled. "Use the head."

Hand over mouth, Newman took off down the steps, barely making it to the bathroom in time.

David emerged from below, not bothered by the motion. Slipping behind Brandy, he nuzzled her neck.

"David, stop. That tickles."

"David stop, David stop. That's all I've been hearing from you over the last week. What's the problem?"

"If ye don't mind, I'm tryin' tae keep us off the rocks."

"You know what I mean. That first night in the bar, you were all over me. Now you act like I have a disease."

"I'm just feelin' a wee bit vulnerable. I'm comin' out o' a bad marriage, ye know."

"That's not it. If you remember, you came onto me, obviously so I'd choose your boat to lead this hunt. You used me."

"Oh, please! Like
you're
so innocent. I needed the job, an' ye've never hesitated paradin' me around in skimpy outfits, usin' me as Highland arm candy. Business is business."

"If that's the way you want to play it, fine. Just so you know, I met with a very wealthy woman earlier today who offered me use of her boat. It's about three times the size of this piece of driftwood, and the press'll eat her up just as much as they do you."

"Ye're lyin'."

"Her name's Theresa Cialino."

"Johnny C.'s widow?"

"You got it. So you'd better start making nice again or …"

Michael Newman stumbled back into the pilothouse, his face pale. "Caldwell, I can't handle much more of this. We either do this now, or you drop me off somewhere."

"Relax, I just spoke with Hoagland. The buoy with the bait's in the water. You can reset the array from active to passive."

"Thank Christ." Using the mouse, Newman clicked on a command, then typed in PASSIVE.

Across Loch Ness, thirty-four pinging sonar buoys went silent.

Calum Forrest's Croft

I opened my eyes, enveloped by darkness. Thunder echoed in the distance, and for a frightening moment, I'd forgotten where I was.

The barn.

I must've dozed off, but something had woken me.

The storm?

The wind?

No, it was a beeping sound, coming from my laptop.

I fumbled for the machine and opened the monitor, its luminescent screen bathing my surroundings in blue light. The GPS real-time image of Loch Ness gradually came into focus, highlighted by thirty- four green dots representing the sonar buoys.

The word ACTIVE had changed to PASSIVE in the upper-right corner of the screen.

The beeping sound was coming from a sonar alert. Heart pounding, I typed in a command, isolating the object's location.

The screen changed, focusing in on the middle third of the array. A tiny red blip was moving south, following Loch Ness's eastern shoreline.

I typed in IDENTIFY OBJECT and pressed ENTER. BIOLOGIC. Length: 15.75 meters.

Speed: 13 knots.

Direction: South by southwest.

Location: 2.48 kilometers south of Foyers.

Almost sixteen meters? That made it over fifty feet long!

As I watched the screen, the red blip suddenly altered its course and crossed the Loch, heading toward the opposite shore.

Jesus… It's moving in this direction.

I pushed open the barn door, shocked at what I was now seeing.

It was night, a nasty one, the dark shoreline directly behind the perimeter fence bathed in an artificial white light. Calum's boat was docked at the pier. Two sheep were
baaing
in a small clearing outside of the fence, the animals tied off to stakes located close to the water. The patch of grass was made visible in the darkness by a red light coming from a lamp post situated atop the perimeter fencing.

Then I saw Calum. The water bailiff was dragging a third sheep to the clearing. The petrified animal was on a short leash, and it was bucking against him furiously.

Calum knelt in the grass and attached the free end of the leash to something unseen on the ground. Reentering the grazing area, he secured the gate, then hurried toward a corner post and pulled a lever on an electrical box.

The shoreline's lights were extinguished, leaving the land and Loch enveloped in blackness save for the red patch of light where the three sheep huddled together, bawling into the night.

I glanced at the laptop. The red blip had crossed over to our western shoreline and was continuing its approach, the object now less than a mile from Invermoriston.

This is insane. He's… he's actually feeding it!

Patches of lightning flashed overhead, revealing storm clouds, mountains, and Calum, still at his post. Sweat poured from my body. My flesh tingled.

The blip grew nearer.

Trembling, yet needing to get closer, I slipped out of the barn and crept toward the fence.

The three sheep fought their collars, their cries becoming more desperate.

I crept along the outside of the fence, close to where the rest of the herd huddled and snorted.

The blip passed Invermoriston, erasing any doubts.

I continued along the perimeter until I was within forty yards of the water's edge. Deciding I was close enough, I knelt in the mud and waited.

The sheep continued mounting and gnawing at one another in fear.

And then they froze.

I never saw the monster as it approached the shoreline, I only saw a dark mass, its upper torso as large as a school bus, as it emerged like a shadow, and then its wide, serpentlike head became bathed in the red pool of light, and its immense jaws snapped, lightning-quick, upon two of the sheep. One disappeared into the night, the other flipped up into the air, then landed awkwardly on its back, its hind legs fractured, yet still kicking. While the injured animal flopped on the ground, its surviving companion wrenched and twisted its head, finally freeing itself of the leash's collar.

The sheep darted away.

The heavens ignited in a blaze of white and navy, revealing the silhouette of a towering head and neck which lashed sideways across the patch of red light with impossible, heart-stopping quickness.

The open jowls snatched the fleeing sheep, the monster flinging its head back, engulfing the farm animal in one whole, sickening motion.

It was brutal and frightening and startling to behold, yet I looked on, paralyzed, my eyes as wide as saucers as the heavens darkened again and the monster morphed once more into the shadows.

Before the creature could advance, the shoreline suddenly reappeared, bathed in its brilliant white light, driving the devil back into its watery domain.

Shaking, I forced myself to take deep breaths. The creature I had just witnessed was as cold and cruel as the Loch itself, as violent as nature could be. It was pure animal, pure evolution, existing solely on instinct. It was magnificent in its primal beauty, and frightening in the ruthlessness of its attack.

I needed to see more. I needed to
know
more.

Regaining my feet, I grabbed my laptop and hurried around to the front of the gate, quietly letting myself in the grazing area.

Calum stood over the remaining sheep, then shot the injured beast with a revolver. Dragging the dead animal to the water, he pushed the bleeding carcass over the edge. He reentered the grazing area, then saw me as he approached the back of the farmhouse, stopping dead in his tracks. "Ye saw?"

"Everything." Lightning flashed overhead. "Let's talk inside."

He thought for a long moment, then I followed him up the stoop of his back porch and into the farmhouse.

Urquhart Bay
11:25 P.M.

Michael Newman pointed at the screen, too excited to remain seasick. "We lost it after it passed Invermoriston, then it reappeared. See? It's staying deep, hanging out in the middle of the Loch, just south of Invermoriston."

David peered over the engineer's shoulder, high on adrenaline. "Invermoriston? That's like what? Ten miles south? How do we get it to swim up here?"

"Give it time. Maybe it'll smell the bait?"

"And maybe we'll lose it again. The bait's just sitting in the water. If it wanted it, it would have taken it long ago. This thing's not stupid."

David looked out the starboard window. Though the wind had died down, it was still drizzling, thinning out what had been a capacity crowd of more than three thousand. "Brandy, move us closer to the buoy, I have an idea."

Calum Forrest's Croft
11:37 P.M.

I sat at Calum's kitchen table, my pulse beating in rhythm to a grandfather clock ticking somewhere in the darkened living room.

The water bailiff set out two cups of coffee, then added a shot of whisky to each. "Aye takes me a nip or three afore my nerves calm doon. My wife, God rest her soul, often had tae dae it for me."

"How long have you been feeding it?"

"Since afore ye were born, an' long afore that, but only in winters. Come summer, there's plenty o' fish."

"But not this summer?"

He glanced at my injured foot. "I think ye a'ready ken that answer, dae ye no'?"

"This sheep croft, how long has it been in your family?"

"Since the time o' yer kin, Sir Adam Wallace."

"Sir Adam Wallace? Never heard of him."

"Then it's best ye ask yer faither."

"I'm asking you. Was Adam Wallace a Templar Black Knight?"

"He wis the first."

"So the mission of the Black Knights was to feed these creatures?"

"It's a part o' it, an' we call them Guivres. The one they call Nessie's the last."

"Why's she the last?"

"Cannae say."

"Then let me say. From the size of her, there's no way Nature ever intended her or her kind to be permanent inhabitants of a fresh water loch, even one as big as Loch Ness. That means the Black Knights must have cut off her passage to the North Sea… am I right?"

Calum said nothing, but the twinkle in his eye encouraged me to continue.

"Now why would the Black Knights want these monsters stuck in Loch Ness?" I thought a moment. "You were using them! You wanted to keep people away. That's it, isn't it?"

"Sort o'."

"Fine. Forget about the Knights' mission for now I'm more concerned with why this creature's feeding on humans."

"As am I."

"The Anguilla eel that attacked me had lesions in its brain, caused by hydrocarbon poisoning."

"Whit's that?"

"It comes from oil. There's oil leaking somewhere, and it's getting into the Loch. You're the water bailiff, have you—"

"I havenae found any oil."

"Okay. But what if it's coming through the passage that connects the Loch with the North Sea?"

The old man considered this scenario. "Aye, that's possible."

"Then there really is a passage! Tell me where it is."

He shook his head. "I cannae dae that. Besides, the passage collapsed years ago, back when they built the A82. It trapped a few o' the Guivres in Loch Ness, preventin' the rest o' their kind frae enterin'. Nessie's the last o' them. The alpha beast, as Doc Hornsby wid say."

And now she's gone crazy."

"Aye."

"Those underwater lights… when did you install them?"

"No' that long ago."

"Winter? Spring?"

He avoided eye contact. "Maybe winter."

"What happened this winter that you felt a need to install the lights?"

"Ye said it yersel', Nessie went crazy!" He pushed away from the table, obviously agitated. "Whit are ye gonnae dae now that ye ken? Will ye kill her like yer faither wants? Is that why ye're here?"

"My father wants the monster killed?"

"Dinnae play games, I want tae ken whit ye'll dae tae her."

It was Alban MacDonald's words, and I offered the same reply. "I'll free her if I can. Is that what you want?"

I thought that would please him, but instead he turned away, his fists balled, his weathered face turning red.